The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich
BBC4

Julian of Norwich’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography briefly ponders her somewhat unusual name, then notes: “no other information concerning her identity or origins has come to light”.

Such a biographical void is a challenge for anyone attempting to make a popular television documentary. In The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich (BBC4, 19 July), Dr Janina Ramirez, an Oxford medievalist, soon exhausted the English language’s supply of conditional verbs (“could have”, “might have”, “would have”, “must have”) in an attempt to give the fourteenth-century mystic a life. She did better with the works, but it took her a long time to get there.